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Sunday, May 08, 2011

Second Treatise Of Civil Government, VI - VII

VI (Of Paternal Power) - It is the duty of parents-- both mother and father-- to raise, care for, and teach their children, who are unable to comport themselves with the civil laws and the law of reason while they have still not reached the age of reason.  Until that time, the parents must show what it is to act within the bounds of rules by setting up rules for their children.  It is the duty of children, upon reaching adulthood, to continue to honore their parents, but this does not mean they are duty-bound to continue to follow their parents' directives.  After grown children are able to live according to their own reason, parents can no longer legitimately exercise that kind of restraint.

The authority parents have over their children is not a model for the authority monarchs could have over their subjects.  So don't even go there.

VII (Of Political or Civil Society) - Marriage for life developed in mankind because each child born to a woman arrived before the previous had grown old enough and rational enough to care for himself.  Since the duty of the father to each child continued over long stretches of time, it was important that the mother and father of each child be tied to one another for the duration. 

Civil, or political, society comes into being when each citizen gives up the right he has within the state of Nature to exact punishment for crimes.  When all instead cede this power to a governing authority, the better to avoid poor or extreme application of the law of Nature, those men have established a real society.  Note that a monarchy government is incompatible with this definition, for it allows a single man, the monarch, to continue to possess the same powers over life and death that all possessed within the state of Nature.  And one more point about that: if other men witness the monarch exercising that right, it is likely they will conclude that the right can be exercised against the monarch as well-- even if only for self-preservation-- and we're right back to the state of Nature anyway.

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